In or Out?

Sarita Chawla and the implicit exclusivity of judgment

by Art Kleiner

"I'm curious," she wrote, "that no reference was made in The Dance of Change to the book I edited a few years ago. I really do want to authentically know if you did not think it worthy....... and if so, what led you to that conclusion?"

Self-possession emerges in posture. Even in a room of twenty to twenty-five people, all eyes will stray, from time to time, to the most self-possessed people. They are like figures constructed against the golden mean; the frame of their body in its surroundings, the arch of their joints and the wall behind them, calls to something embedded in human attention. Thus, in a meeting of council members of the Society of Organizational Learning, my eyes continually returned to Sarita Chawla, a woman I had met in passing before but never talked to, as we sat across a circle of chairs from each other and as, without my knowledge, she prepared a question for me in her mind.

The meeting itself was held so that I could explain our upcoming book, The Dance of Change, to a group of elected representatives of SoL And thus there was an inbred tension, right from the start. SoL is a community, and a highly political entity — in the sense that no individual decision is made in isolation. Members are chosen to be admitted; they are admitted in one of three categories. They can be researchers, with credits acceptable in academic or research circles; practitioners, with a current paid role in an existing corporation or organization; or consultants, with an established and recognized practice. Then each category group elects four representatives, who meet together to decide policy. When you want to get something done at SoL, you propose it to the council, and inevitably decisions get filtered through loyalties to dozens of overlapping groups of constituents: the council members and their relationships, the consulting firms they belong to or work with, the corporations that have fostered the work, the research institutions and their priorities, and all the personal cliques that will inevitably emerge over time.

In the end, there is also another loyalty: loyalty to an idea that this is how to get something done, by bearing in mind the values and spirit of the whole body of people, the "community." This was perhaps the biggest difference that SoL had from the Fieldbook Project, the creators of the Dance of Change; we had proceeded with almost no regard for the "community’s" acceptance. To get a project like a book done on time, it is necessary to jump in and make it happen. And yet the book also "belonged" to the SoL community: It stemmed in part from work done under SoL auspices, many SoL members had contributed to it, and it would probably be the most visible product of learning organization work to the outside world during the next year or two. So I had come to SoL, with the best of intentions on both sides, to answer any questions that Council members might have about the book. This, I hoped and expected, would help them decide what stance they felt SoL should take about this book that both belonged to their organization and did not belong at all.

So I previewed the book, and tried to be engaging and candid as best I could; and I am told this contributed to SoL’s continued interest in supporting the book. But the most interesting issue never came up at the meeting at all, even though the very backbone of the meeting was suffused with it. The issue surfaced only later, when Sarita emailed me to ask about the source of our editorial decisions.

Sarita's name reads on the page like it should rhyme with "Chiquita," but it is pronounced (I realized for the first time at this meeting) with an accent on the first syllable: "SIR-ita." She is a former anthropologist, born I presume in India, living in California. She is physically small, and her eyes convey alert calm. She speaks rarely, slowly. She clearly wants to understand people – that is evident in the way she regards them, without tilting her head, as if subjecting them to a gentle sweep of study. Her complexion is dark, her eyes made up, her hair a closely gathered lush hood around her face.

Her email made only a passing reference to the Council meeting. She wrote:

"I'm curious that no reference was made in The Dance of Change to the Learning Organization anthology I edited a few years ago. It is always a dilemma to ask and I really do want to authentically know if you

a) did not think it worthy.......which is perfectly good feedback if that was so. if so, what led you to that conclusion?

b) it was too old

c) You did not think of it

d) other!"

She made it clear that this was not a pecuniary request; she didn't expect to earn royalties from the book. But as the editor of an anthology, she saw herself as a kind of steward, a protector, of the 39 authors who contributed to the book. I took her at her word when she wrote: "I want to repeat that I really do want an authentic answer from you...even if...you thought it stunk! The feedback is valuable, not just praise!"

Under her question was a deeper question: How do you achieve a presence in a community? Is it enough to belong? Is it enough to be anointed by, say, inclusion in an anthology, or inclusion in membership? And wasn't "election" into the Fieldbook just another kind of anointing, another kind of arbitrary inclusion?

I had been living with this question ever since I was an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog where people always wanted to know why their piece wasn't included, or reviewed. The Catalog, and its publication CoEvolution Quarterly, (now Whole Earth Magazine), were not just books and magazines; they too were clubs, and didn't a club have an obligation to its members?

So I took her book down from the shelf and looked at it. I knew the book vaguely; in fact, I had had a lunch with the original publisher, John Renesch, in which he had suggested that I might edit that volume. I had demurred, mistrusting not just the project but the people involved; and then the project had evolved, switching to Pegasus. Sarita had taken on the editorship and produced a credible volume. I realized, looking through it once again, that there were contributors here whom I liked, whom I had had interesting conversations with, who definitely had something to offer the world – and whose offerings were not evident in this particular package.

So I replied (again by email):

"Sarita:

It's always tough to say why one didn't recommend something. Certainly, I was aware of your anthology. And my take on it was intuitive, so this message is written after the fact. But I stand behind the decision to not include a review of it. Even if I had known back then I would have to articulate my reasoning to you later, I would have done the same thing.

Your book, Learning Organizations, is a good anthology. It provides access to a lot of peoples' thinking. It carves out some boundaries of the territory. But it's not a great piece of work in itself. Reading that book, in itself, would not change anyone.

The criteria for books that we recommend in the Fieldbooks is very specific: We have to feel that either people will use it to change their thinking, or they'll use it for a practical end.To accomplish these goals, as a business book, a book has to meet the reader more than halfway. It's hard to articulate exactly what I mean by that, but the Fieldbooks represent an example of one way to achieve that: Through absolutely rigorous editing, in which we try to eliminate all jargon -- or at least make it explicit what it means. We don't always succeed, by a long shot, but we try. That's why it's often very frustrating to write for the Fieldbook."

email your comments